Posted: Thu 30 Jun 2011, 03:59 Post subject:
PLUG ObjectivesSubject description: This was the idea that gave rise to the PLUG sub-forum

When I was project coordinator for Puppy, first with 2.15CE and later with 4.2x series, there was a cacophony of voices clamoring to be heard on the subject of what Puppy could or should be. In the beginning it was easy to pick out the voices of reason, but in the end there was so much "sound" that it became almost impossible to "hear" what was good, and reasonable, and important above the din. It became abusive to my ears when some elected to follow the path of repetition in monotones and I grew tired of listening very quickly. There is a lesson in that for those who are willing to learn.

With the Puppy Community being now so large, especially if you include the voices of Puppy lovers in Vietnam, China, India and South America, it is nigh on impossible for project coordinators or developers to "hear" what everyone has to say. A "seat at the table" is meaningless if the table is many times larger than the largest banquet hall table ever imagined; how can anyone hear anything when everyone is talking at once? Users of Puppy who feel ignored by the hierarchy, amorphous as that is with Puppy, need to find a single voice so they can address their issues in unison and have some reasonable chance that voice will be heard. Here then is my humble suggestion for a way forward for Puppy, leaving behind the discord that comes with a cacophony of sound.

1. Start a Puppy Linux Users Group (PLUG).

The advantages are that (a) the voices of many can be united in a single, much more powerful voice, (b) those who need to hear only need listen for that single voice and (c) no permission is required from Barry Kauler, the current project coordinator or any of the developers. Let the users come to the PLUG with their issues and let the developers tap that PLUG when they need ideas in pursuit of their hobby. That will result in a nexus that both groups can accept and appreciate; the users will have a place to voice their concerns and desires and the developers will have a well to voluntarily draw upon when they are seeking direction for their creative ideas.

2. Choose a place for the PLUG

Whether it be a part of this forum (not recommended IMHO) or another place where those elected to administer the PLUG have more direct control, the PLUG will need to be clearly visible and accessible to ALL Puppy users, including those who are also Puppy developers. In this day and age it seems logical for that place to be in cyberspace, so all can have direct access, but it must be moderated to ensure that all will have an equal chance to be heard or seen. Perhaps it can be linked from or hosted by puppylinux.org, or maybe puppylinux.com if Barry is inclined to offer those. If not, find your own place.

3. Choose a small team of PLUG leaders

It doesn't matter who these people are in terms of their technical ability with Linux or Puppy. It only matters that they are prepared to listen to the user base and are capable of logically organising the cacophony of sound into a single, representative voice.

4. Establish a charter for the PLUG

Set the boundaries early on. An advisory group needs its politicians to express the group's desires in a palatable way without the risk of alienating those who need to hear them. The PLUG should be a mammoth "filter" of sorts; removing those strident yet unreasonable and discordant demands while harmonising the rest into a single stream of ideas.

5. Promote the PLUG

Everyone needs to understand where the "speakers" are located, so they can connect their input or listen to the output. It would not be unreasonable to have several sub-PLUGs located in various centres around the world and dedicated to translating the local voices into a common language for the master PLUG to represent. That is crucial to give voice to the hitherto silent majority in those countries mentioned earlier. Hacao in Vietnam, Tutu in France and a multitude of other NES Puppy derivatives and their devotees would be forever grateful, I'm sure.

Understand the PLUG

Puppy development will never change. It is conducted by hobbyists and volunteers in the true spirit of Open Source and following its creator's innovative model of Fun First! If you think that model is unusual, I suggest that you revisit your knowledge of Google and its development process for an example. The PLUG must be prepared to accept that it cannot compel volunteers; it must instead appeal to them in every sense of that word. They have to WANT to follow the wishes and desires of the PLUG. No-one develops in a vacuum. There is always a payout somewhere, although it may not be the payout that many might expect. Those who do it for kudos will WANT to satisfy the desires of the multitude represented by the PLUG; no compulsion will be necessary. Those who do it to learn more about programming and software development will look to the PLUG for new challenges. Those who do it for the simple pleasure of seeing their work used will find a hungry user base at the PLUG.

Those who have truly been craving "organisation" for Puppy will see an opportunity in the PLUG. Those who have merely been exercising their discordant voices will lose their excuse to complain, at least about that. This is something that users can DO to be heard without pleading with the volunteer developers, who now are frequently unable to focus their efforts in the face of an incoherent cacophony of demands for change. It is a positive suggestion and I hope it will be viewed in that light. It is a suggestion that I have made before, albiet not for quite the same reasons, and it hasn't been acted upon. Like all suggestions, it will be worthless if someone - anyone - isn't prepared to DO something with it. If you have the WILL then you will find the WAY.

Good luck and farewell._________________Actions speak louder than words ... and they usually work when words don't!
SIP:whodo@proxy01.sipphone.com; whodo@realsip.com

My thoughts as I had originally presented them. The forum structure is a bit different, I guess we'll have to use threads instead of subsections. I do hope we get a few of our own moderators.
Puppy Linux Users Group
(PLUG)
*********
subforums:
-Documention System (needs to be consolidated desperately-can and should we organize it?)
-Official Stable Release (suggestions and bug fixes, which one IS it?)
-Creative Puplets (suggestions and bug fixes, what are they and what does each do? Where are they?)
-Help Desk (forums, IRC channel must be included in Puppy family, recommend a new one with we can have active people in charge of)

Mission Statement:
Our goal is to serve as a portal for communication between Puppy Linux Users and Puppy Linux Developers. We shall endeavor to promote positive relations and mutual respect. We will represent Puppy Linux and its community to the best of our ability.
1. We will filter both suggestions and issues and streamline them into a comprehensive presentation for the developers.
2. We will relay and explain developer concerns and issues and update the users as needed.
3. We will attempt to consolidate information and documentation into one easily accessable resource.
4. We will provide support and structure for a Puppy Linux "Help Desk".

with the dynamic of the overall forum, with devs/users producing their own puplets/pets based on official puppys and the developers of the official puppys then using them in a later official version how would the plug interact with this?

has any evidence or methods been produced (to back up the request for plug), on what problems need addressing and how this would be done? (which I think is needed to justify the plugs existence)

IMHO I think you have the beginnings of a sound idea but it will need a lot more work to show why and how it would work before anyone can pass judgement.

Mission Statement:
Our goal is to serve as a portal for communication between Puppy Linux Users and Puppy Linux Developers.

We shall endeavor to promote positive relations and mutual respect.

We will represent Puppy Linux and its community to the best of our ability.
/quote ends here

This part being most important to me.

We shall endeavor to promote positive relations and mutual respect.

That means that the persons that represent the PLUG need to have these qualifications.

Do the chosen persons have these qualifications?
I fail to see them live up to that now.
Maybe them can do it later but the track record is not promising at all!_________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

Yes if that is what is happening then I understand your frustration and I would support you and I would try to find solutions to that problem too.

I would contact John. Only him can deal with that.

But if I am right which I can not be certain of but I do my best to "assess" the situation and I see this as a battle of wills or what word to use.

I trust that all of us care about Puppy but that we have different views on how one best do this.

I repeat myself but I trust that the word slack is important here.

I am not good at giving slack myself. I easily get triggered into feeling hurt and seeing ill will in actions. But if we really have the best for Puppy as the goal then we have to give more slack to the Mods of the forum

and the alternative is to trust your view and go for the only working solution to that view and that is to contact John and have a spoken word exchange with him. Written words will not do. Them are too easy to misinterpret. Even a phone call is too distant. One have to actually meet but if one live too far then a Video can be next best and better than just talking over phone. Writing in forum seems to fail again and again for us.

I would suggest that we are much more patient with the style of moderation.

Is it okay to mention how this started. Puppyite asking for Puppy to change. Many of us explaining how one do such things and then ....

Puppyite has created his own PLUG. Should not input from those that join that venture also be considered. Some kind of "go between" maybe is needed? To be complete I mean.

I am not sure if I dare to say this. Could one maybe even start there and see if it at all is a possible way.

I could be totally wrong but my take on all this is that Puppyite fail to get how Devs do things. Most likely because he himself is no Dev and fail to get how dependent them are on to be their own Boss to get things at all going.

The way Puppyite went about it was bound to drive away each Dev and maybe my naive postings are too destructive too.

I find the current flow of exchanges mistrust and lack of trust to be very destructive to Puppy. So my motivation is to defend Puppy and ask for more tolerance and that we all give slack to each other. And us slow down and rethink the whole thing.

What is best for Puppy? To give the Devs total freedom to do things in their own pace. PLUG can still be a very good thing if we stop the demands on total control over it. John Murga should be the one in total control in his forum.

Or if PLUG wants total control then take PLUG to Puppyite and run it from his servers. That is the fair way to do things in my opinion

Edit. Thanks John for the kind words. I am total nobody and even a big loser but I do love Puppy very much so I gave this topic my best shot.

To move from one continent to another is no small thing at all so wish you the best there.

Thanks Aitch, good now you and John have found each other so the future looks brighter._________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution thoughLast edited by nooby on Wed 06 Jul 2011, 13:47; edited 2 times in total

I apologize as I am currently in the process of moving house/continent, and haven't been able to keep up with recent developments.

While I have reservations about PLUG on the forum in it's current form I do believe that it is a useful concept going forward for the Puppy ecosystem as whole. And given the effort that has already been made I would suggest that ttuuxxx is the best person to moderate this area.

I believe that some reactive moderation may have been happening and I apologize for that too, please feel free to voice your concerns directly to me as currently I am unlikely to see them otherwise.

It is because of puppyite that people think 'total control'
He was and still is a control freak....he has no members on his forum, there is no access to his website - it's just 'Iam right, puppyite'
He simply 'stole' WhoDo's suggestion for PLUG, setup a website and blocked it!

Cutting slack is a 2 way process, or 1 way recipe for a despot

Not my preferred option, I'd even accept the fluffy stick, but the spikey one....no thanks

Quote:

PLUG can still be a very good thing if we stop the demands on total control over it. John Murga should be the one in total control in his forum.

I thought I'd explained that, ....no-ones trying to undermine or remove John M's control, I agree, he NEEDS that, as site owner/Admin...just the heavy-handed moderator, in particular, as the others have not 'interfered'
and made a nuisance of themselves

Quote:

Or if PLUG wants total control then take PLUG to Puppyite and run it from his servers. That is the fair way to do things in my opinion

That's your opinion, sure, to which you are entitled, but we differ on the fairness aspect of it

To me fair means what in legal circles, is called 'the level playing field....no-one having superiority or unnecessary advantage'

Question: How much power do you have to change things?
Compare to a moderator, then apply the level playing field argument in terms of power....who needs to cut whom, slack?

Edit: thanks John, you posted while I replied to nooby
Any update on the chat implementation?

is the software for the Forum phpBB x.x
I trust that you have written about it somewhere. So pardon me being lazy

Edit maybe that is not something I am supposed to reveal?
Sorry I did not know. A friendly PM warned me that maybe the spammers want to know so I changed it to xx so contact ttuuxx and tell him what it means in terms of what the software allow us to do.

The reason we ask is that it has implications for what one can do as Admin and Moderator and Bruce and Flash has indicated them are not allowed by the software to do certain things and you have mention that you consider what it would mean to change to a newer version.

Does that one cost much money maybe. Going from free to paid?
And do we risk to lose the content in the migration. Such things we ask to know more about.

Nooby's comment - the good intentionof PLUG can destroy what is a more complex free flow among people that has worked rather well for Puppy Linux. To try to organize what makes Puppy puppy more formally can destroy the inner motivation the Devs have. It is not as easy as some of initiators of PLUG seems to think.

Bert describe how it works in Puppy forum. He not only grasp it very well. He can express it using words that should be able to reach the initiators of PLUG.
_________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution thoughLast edited by nooby on Thu 07 Jul 2011, 03:10; edited 3 times in total

A forum where like-minded people exchange ideas is like a natural phenomenon. Ideas are proposed and if they contain value for the participants, these ideas start developing naturally, out of the enthousiasm of the members. This great forum has always worked like that.

The problem starts when someone proposes to organize it all. At first, it looks like a good idea to add more structure to the way people collaborate, but it is now historically proven adding "organization" on top of what used to flow naturally usually ends in disharmony, fights, power games and ultimatily war.

This reminds me of a story I once read, it may have been here, it may have been from Lobster, sorry, I forgot the origins:

Quote:

A man is walking in a park with the devil on a sunny afternoon. It's a beautiful summer day and they're having a good time. About 100 yards in front of them another man is walking leisurely. Suddenly this man stops and picks up something from the ground. Next he starts jumping, shouting and dancing like a fool.
The man asks the devil: "What is it that this guy picked up from the ground?"
To which the devil replies: " Oh, he found a piece of the Truth."
"That must be bad news for you" the man replied.
"Oh no" replied the devil, "I will let him organize it".

Maybe I didn't present it as clearly as I thought I had.
PLUG isn't about structuring how people collaborate or stifling creativity.
It's simply about making sense of what we already have for everyone else to find and follow along.

It's finding those good ideas and putting them somewhere so they can be heard. Many good ideas have been smothered because of noise.

It's reporting back from the devs (whatever they are doing, we don't want to change that) and making sure everyone else understands the whys and wherefors.

We have forums, we have a wiki, we have a well minded search, we have multiple hosting locations and stuff everywhere, and many attempts over the years to make it all easier to understand and find. How many threads complain the package manager is a mess, the wiki is not up to date, the pets and info are scattered to the four winds, and even searching in forums leads one on a merry chase from link to link to link to link.

Does everyone here know what all of the available puplets are? Do you all know what they all do and why one would be better for a particular user than another? Could you find them all? Could somebody offhand advise a user which ones are best for wireless, which ones are best for specific hardware? So many questions asked and a really hard time finding that information, other than whatever one is the current talk-of-the-day.

It's been stated what PLUG's goals are. I wish people would stop confusing this with the disaster puppyite created and his control issues. This is NOTHING like that.

now we have acknowledgement from john murga (big thank you john) what is the first priority for plug?

heres an idea to get the ball rolling
perhaps listing and coordinating what resources are available in a separate thread (with links) to avoid the noise of discussion and to provide an upto date list of resources?
(but this will take a lot of work and dedication and will be rolling/ongoing and not static so that it will remain upto date)

edited to add: we may need to ask lobster for some input as he always seems to know what is happening.

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